Armor used to have a VERY different logic than they do today. Made to be simplified and easy to understood (happened roughly at the same time as divide by 100 hp/damage change).

You used to have to "reroll" map seed if you want a certain ship type at map start. You can now right click and pick what you want if you had a map you liked enough as opposite to find map and ship type you want together.

It used to be that if you lose your rare "unique structure such as core fabiractor Spire ram". You couldn't build any more afterward. Now with hacking system you could gain permanent access even if it died.

Additional of a turret-per-planet cap. They mostly were used to be galaxy wide capped (mostly because turret controller mk V are still galaxy wide capped and especially the HBC line). Fortress used to be all galaxy capped as well until we got mini-forts.

In the past AI command station (especially 3 to 4 mark) would sometime through sheer luck manage to get a combination of stuff that would be "painful in the rear end" than on average to break through for conquest or neutering purpose. But otherwise were MOSTLY themselves unremarkable. Now? Planetary Subcommander on purpose put guard post and other stuff in a way that is on purpose designed to inflict pain on top of the subcommander unique command station's planet-wide effect!

A new CTRLS (configuration of autonomous behavior) was introduced in 4.0.

By the way, when did tractors start dragging away mobile rally points to other planets? That is really irritating.

That's a remarkably good troll on the AI's part. Fixed in 7.021, regrettably.

From somewhere in the LP:

Quote

So, AI progress. As I mentioned before, it's a rough indication of how aware of you the AI is. Think of it like a peace keeping troop deployment. You start off with a lightly armed foot patrol, which after a few 'accidents' expands to some dudes in a Humvee. Then tanks, and large scale troops deployments, and napalm. Eventually, if you rile them up enough, the AIs will start sending motherships and Hunter/Killers after you. This is roughly the equivalent of para-dropping a fully operation Nimitz class aircraft carrier into the local village pond.

Zombie Redirection: First mentioned http://lparchive.org/AI-War-Fleet-Command/Update%2016/ , I'm sure there's somewhere else further on in the LP where I use it against a CPA or something like that. Pull the two together, maybe with an explanation from someone else as this is quite a common technique.

From that same page on the LP:

Quote

I see AI War as a rogue-like RTS. Just like in a dungeon crawler there's a theoretical 'end goal' that you're striving for. But the real meat of the game is in working out the interlocking systems, figuring out how to overcome the challenges, and once you've done so then handicapping yourself or adding extra difficulty to see if you can do it all again.

For reference, I've only ever won one difficulty 10 game. In order to do so I exploited at least three different loopholes or inconsistent behaviours which have now been closed. It was done just after the introduction of salvage, which has now been balanced / nerfed fairly heavily. And at one point I ran out of tactical options so hard that I had to put the game on pause for a week until the developer added black-hole immunity to the Mk V spirecraft jumpship just for me. Which I then exploited the hell out of. Other tactics that have worked in the past are choosing an X-map and turtling up behind a massive checkpoint, exploiting Martyrs and lightning missiles so hard that they got redesigned, and adding as much positive cheese in the lobby as physically possible.

The best part about the game though is that when you're playing at this kind of difficulty you can get an almost dungeon-master relationship with the devs, if you want. As an exercise take a look at the 7.0 patch notes, especially around the 7.021 release when I was last really active. In particular, the line 'Now when launching a CPA, if it empties the galaxy of all guard ships and Strategic Reserve ships and STILL does not have enough to fill the specified number of ships, it starts freeing Special Forces ships for the attack.' As one of the devs is keen on saying, 'And they say AI War doesn't have PvP...'

The great Neinzul Lightning Warhead [strike]Robbery[/strike] Translocation (from All Creatures, and I think it's mentioned in the LP somewhere too)

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Uh, there's a Mk III lighting warhead here from the neinzul rocketry corps. It's just kinda ... sitting on the planet next to the Cenurin wormhole, doing nothing.

Problem solved. Turns out I didn't need the Martyrs after all. Ahhh, just a shame that bug got fixed so fast.

Quote

I like to imagine that the AIs use their hyper-advanced technology to open a miniature wormhole just behind my ear so they can whisper taunting insults to me. But they're too honourable to send a lightning warhead through it.

Quote

Quote from: Shady Amish Terror

That...went more smoothly than I might have expected. I was kind of figuring 'smashing a planet into an AI core' would perk the AI's attention a little more than that. I mean, granted, that was still completely absurd, but it's interesting that the AI STILLdoesn't seem to consider you its main priority.

At this point I think you could consider the AI as having a fairly significant case of Alzheimers. We've been poking holes in its memory by taking out data centres, scrambled it's brain by removing the co-processors and then did a super-terminal hack on top of that. That has left it with a vague idea that something is wrong (~200 AIP floor), but not fully aware (~460AIP).

10.5% of the players who have completed the game have the rarest achievement. I'd wager that if you actually added everything together, seeing as nobody really plays that many games, 1/5-1/4 of the people who have won the game once have also won against a rare/dangerous AI type on 9+.

This is a game that has a lot of experts.

Edit: Also, 21% of people who have ever won a game have the double godlike achievement for beating two AIs on diff 10. Even I don't have that ('cos of a bug).

I do have four others, but honestly I've already spent quite a while pulling stuff out for now. So I'll just mention them briefly:

The 10/10 AAR in general, under the title of something something 'The Bug is Real'.

Lyudmila from the AAR, because damn if I didn't love cheesily circle kiting that little cursed golem back when it only cost 10AIP to repair before the big rebalance.

Something about the tactic of using a spire jumpship to cross the entire planet and unload ships on different sides, tying up the threat essentially forever as they chase them from side to side. A significant if micro-intensive reason why the new 'move on' logic was implemented I think.

Maybe something about the Mk V spirecraft changes (i.e. the spire transport and it getting upgraded so I could get across a blocking HW).

Of course there's plenty of other great AARs out there, especially the older ones where the game was completely different. Also seconding a vote for ride the lightning. Highlighting one every five days or something like that would be a great idea.

Thanks for this. If you're in touch with any of the other old guard who aren't circling the forum like sharks(A or B) could you prod them? I saw that Steam group and the SA thread, and I'm convinced there are other places.

I'll be putting up AAR and LP content starting tomorrow, doing more every other day. The other days are actually for rough descriptions of the expansions and major version changes. I think I will start with yours since LParchive is still pretty well known.

TODO: The below can probably use a lot of tidying up and revising. Think of it as a first draft for a potential KS post, probably part way through after posting the (much better written and laid out) LP.

AI War has had a ridiculous number of changes over the years, but it's when you really stress the game that things get the most fun. Even some of the 'bugs' become a fascinating part of the emergent gameplay, and you get near real-time feedback from the developers ... what more can a strategy gamer ask.

00.00: Okay, so I've backed myself into a fairly small corner on this map.

00.02: Scout the immediate neighbours, Murderlance and Poan.

00.06: Nuclear train on Poan. Nuclear train on Poan. Oh man, what have I let myself in for. It's covered by 2 shields, a couple of widows, and 2 regens. Even worse, it's just routing through ... meaning that even if I kill the train station on Poan, I may well get another one.

00.10: Okay then, let's talk strategy. First up, yep, I'm regretting those astro-trains. I think the first order of business is going to be staying on the homeworlds and wiping out every single train station within deep-striking distance.

00.14: Oh [email protected]*$. Hey, guess who just decided to pop his head into one of my homeworlds for no apparent reason? That's right, the nuclear astro-train! Everything explodes. Planet loses supply. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth of the AI overlords turn into a boot stamping on the face of humanity forever.

01.12.30: So uh, those three massive ships. That wouldn't happen be the black widow golem, armored golem and H/K currently proceeding through the ruins of Poan's turret beachhead, would it? The ones heading right for my homeworld?

03.00: Well, we're back up to 12 massive ships again. But at this stage I'm fairly confident I can handle any two or three golems who peek their heads into a homeworld. Just a tad concerned what might happen if, say, 9 golems get it into their heads to join the threat fleet...

03.10: Penetrator manages to catch one of the nuke trains as it passes through Poan again. Escapes with about 15% health after the hybrids once more display their displeasure. Even with scouts dropping like flies due to counter-spies and tachyon trains, here's what my warning box normally looks like:

Maybe add a few waves in there as well.

03.22: EMP astro-train hits Murderlanceras. EMP immune units hit it. That's one way to take one down, I suppose...

The forcefield inhibitor astro train with it is painful though, as it means the widows will once again successfully steal half my fleet.

03.27: Oh, hello two black widow golems and a H/K on my homeworld. I'm kind of getting used to this now. Implosions!

03:31: So, uh, bad news. Spirecraft asteroids aren't nuke immune.

04.27: Nuke train is heading straight for my homeworld. Good job I noticed it. That would be one heck of a one-two punch from the AI, nuke your homeworld then follow up with four golems to take out the now unshielded command station. Unfortunately the golems take out the brave penetrator pilot, then turn around and run away. C'mon, I need the scrap!

P.S. This really is a lot of golems. I'm becoming uncomfortably blase about them waltzing in to my homeworlds. Thank goodness for implosion artillery.

05.17: Dual EMP trains on my homeworld. Ouch.

07.04: My favourite part was when a widow train passed through and stole all by bombers. So I put all the riots back in the transports, stealing 200 of their ships, and unloaded them right next to my base defences. Payback.

07.41: On further investigation, it looks like it's going to be close to impossible to get trains to stop routing through my homeworlds. Here, for example, is a world 10 hops away from my homeworld which will still route a train through it while trying to reach a train station 15 hops away.

I figure I'd have to clear the best part of half the galaxy, around 50-60 worlds, to stop this. I really messed up putting my homeworlds where they are, rather than in the little 'safe' cluster at the bottom left.

08.18: Nuke train is stationary at Jicidis. Penetrator is suicided to remove it.

08.23: Under the combined might of both normal and rebel fleets, Sezon goes down in under a minute. Turns out there's now another nuke train on Jicidis, so a penetrator is sent to take care of that threat as well.

It fails. The regenerator train next to it RESPAWNS THE NUKER...

09.33: Nuke train nearly 'Oh Yeah!'s Poan. By which I mean of course it did 'Oh Yeah!' Poan and I save scummed, seeing as I had the penetrator sitting just right there and only missed the scout warning by a few seconds. That message is certainly one way to fix a null pointer exception Keith

<Side Note: After finding nuke trains blowing up a planet causes a null pointer exception after the first one or two, the developers fix it by having the AI say, in the style of the Kool-Aid Man, 'OH YEAH!' every time a planet explodes>

09.40: Power goes out, Poan command station explodes, the usual golem battlegroup is on the scene.

6 hops away Operation Death-Leap, after having waited far too long for a tachyon astro train to move on, is now starting. 1,600 ships in assault transports enter the botnet world.

09.41.26: Ships out

09.41.30: Rams up

09.41.49: Wait for another blasted tachyon train to clear off

09.42.28: Boom. FRD weapons free, gents.

09.48: Good news! I've found the first AI homeworld. Bad news - It has five armored and five artillery golems on it. And 8 black widow golems. And 9 H/Ks. And a core raid engine. And the only core world next to it also has a raid engine. Guess I know where all those massive ships are now.

10.55.30: What a guess. Penetrator makes it with literally half a second to spare - the astro train disintegrates as it is passing through the wormhole to Poan.

Quote from: Keith

Quote from: RockyB

Oh. Man. When the rams take out the superfort, all hell breaks loose. I make that the best part of 70 dark spire ships, from the death of one fort.

Probably not too much to worry about. Those guys used to be able to wipe galaxies on high intensity, but are tamer now. I hope to make them less tame (at least that high), though, once I can find a way of doing so that doesn't involve melting everyone's CPU under eleven billionty spawns.

Quote from: RockyB

Uh ... -20AIP for the death of a data centre? I think the dark spire just took out a data centre for me - one on the other side of galaxy I hadn't even found yet. Thanks guys!

11.38: Oh. Hell. So, uh, turns out I wrong about where the second AI homeworld was. I just slapped a couple of raids into one of the jumpships, figuring I could cap this epic AIP reduction session by taking out the co-processors. On their way to the furthest away world, they stop one hop short. Why? Oh, y'know, just an AI homeworld. Jumpship explodes. Raids fall out. Core CPA post triggers.

Quote from: Keith

In other news: if you have so many alerts that the alert box has a scrollbar, start considering alternate possible habitable galaxies.

*cough*

And I don't even have the nofications for seven mining golems yet...

12.52: Oh for the love of pete. Dark spire take down four Mk IV counter-attack guardposts, for 1,500 total attack to my homeworld. YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE HELPING, GUYS.

<Note: At this point a patch was released that fixed a bug with AI 2 ships not moving away from their spawn points>

13.00The name for the next hour and a half is going to be 'Operation: Oh F#@!, Golems!'.

Incoming exo-galactic patch in 00:59.59. When the patch hits I imagine the 36 massive ships and their entourages currently sitting on the second AIs world are suddenly going to wake up and attack us. So, before that happens:

- Get full caps of implosion artillery- See if we can hack that core missile turret controller- Do two shard chases to get the fallen spire frigates

Oh, and build Martys. Lots and lots of Martyrs.

I mean, technically I could just build a missile silo and set an FRD rally point on the AI homeworld for the armored missiles. But let's try not to exploit that too hard, huh.

<Note: This was just after the warhead rebalancing, when there was a fun little bug where the top tier armoured warheads cost 1 metal each.>

14.00: The patch hits. '36 massive AI ships (118,000 strength) are en-route to your planets' takes on a terrifying new meaning. Armored golem flexes as he realises his new physique, then the smile fades as he remembers his six brothers.

Forwards scouts with over-active imaginations are reporting something about 'A heinous swarm of locusts, descending upon us to tear asunder all we hold dear'. A brief check of the threat fleet log indicates... yeah, they might be right:

14.04: Uh, there's a Mk III lighting warhead here from the neinzul rocketry corps. It's just kinda ... sitting on the planet next to the Cenurin wormhole, doing nothing.

Anway, the golems don't want this planet. They just want to move through Cenurin -> Miccacau -> Probably Panza, then hit Muderlanceras. But if I was to hold off the lightning warhead until they're close to the wormhole that this neinzul one is sitting on, and catch them in both blasts at once...

14.04.45: Before

14.04.49: And after.

Yup, that's six dead golems alright. With the 2-warheads-for-the-price-of-one offer, that was a good 10 billion damage. Now, I could just sit here and take care of them all this way. Especially seeing as I have Mk III armored warheads on special offer at 1 metal each. But where's the fun in that.

Oh, scouts report that in addition to the two artillery golems still on Deramic there's three more arties, 3 armored, 6 black widows and 10 H/Ks on Etgin heading this way.

14.10: Now THAT's what I call an attack. Note, this is after three Martyrs detonated already taking out four golems who were encroaching a little to close to the command station. There's also not a single massive ship outstanding.

14.11: After the Maytrs had their play, the only thing left was the cleanup.

14.11.30: Then the enclaves showed up and ... well, that was that.

14.11.40: The very last armored golem just managed to get a shot off at the command station and took it out. It'll be rebuilt in 30 seconds.

'Why do you throw your lives away'

15.00: Engineering mission successful. 8 Rams up. Then the power goes out, and so does the cloaking...

EDIT: Oh hey, I found the super hybrids.

This is ... somewhat absurd. It wasn't until I was looking to crash a ram in the super-hybrid putting up the converter that I realised they were ALL super hybrids.

16.24.55: Of course, in retaliation the AI does this ...

Why yes, that is 1,200 ships caught in an unholy morass of Tractor/Widow astro-trains. Right after their transports exploded, moments after escaping the hunter fleet. Which they are promptly getting dragged back towards. The ship's struggles end when I realise all 1,200 of them are about to be dragged onto the core world. Right next to the Core Raid Engine. An instant 1 million scrap value, indicating that those were actually worth about 10 million metal.

At this point, unfortunately, I burnt out on the game. This happens with every single game I ever play, and it's a testament to AI War that it's one of the very, very few I end up coming back to. I got about another hour and a half into the game and in the face of probably an 80% certainty of winning just couldn't bring myself to put in another 4-8 hours of grinding. Not after the 10/10/10 game at least.

After a few months, an interesting new AI War expansion came out for me to play with. And that lead directly into the big one - the LP currently up on the LP archive. So rest assured that I'm still out there trying to find the perfect way to cook the AI's goose.

p.p.s: I take great pride in getting 33 patch note mentions in 2 months - Not sure quite what my favourite was. Using neinzul rocketry lightning warheads as defensive weapons? The charismatic golem? The 'move along, please' threat logic? The null pointing nuclear train? The instant infinite knowledge extractors? All I know is I look forward to breaking the new toys in AI War II just as much.

EDIT: Adding the above two posts in .txt format with the bbcode for you

5.43: While we're waiting, let's talk grav reactors. These things are seriously evil. And I have to deal with three, one of which is sitting under a Mk. 5 forcefield. Now my normal reaction here would be 'go make some spire rams, flashbang the AI homeworld'. Problem is, I just used my last ebonite on a Martyr and Titanite can't be used for rams. No problem, I'll just make that long awaited pair of Mk. 5 jumpships and go looking for another asteroid field. Oh. Jumpships aren't blackhole immune.

F*@#

5.43.30: So, my new toys. A core railpod fab. Just a smidge under 9 million damage per cap, twice that if they survive for another 2 seconds. They could be a nice anti grav reactor weapon. Oh, sniper immune you say?

F*@#

5.44: My left-over penetrator has only 28 million damage per shot. It won't be able to take out a 60 million health grav reactor. Maybe I can use that Titanite to build a Mk. 5 penetrator though, at the astronomical cost of 1.5 million metal. Could at least deal with the one under the forcefield. Oh, wait. Planetery tachyon coverage. No tachyon immunity.

F*@#

5.44.30: Oh, and they're immune to nukes and EMPs too. Just to add to the fun. Also I suppose an EMP warhead could at least take out the forcefield.

5.44.40: Mk. 5 Forcefields are EMP immune.

F*@#

5.45: The only blackhole immune ships I have are raids. In desperation, I even check the mercenary space dock. Nothing. Looks like my best option at the point is to just spam youngling tigers and bombers at the immensely powerful guard posts with radar dampening and slowing drones. One of which is sitting on the opposite side of the gravity well, and another of which is under 264 million HPs worth of Mk. 5 forcefield.

5.48: I remember I have 74 HaP. Core guard-posts are immune to sabotage hacks.

F*@#

Cue failed attempt to kill them with Lyudmila, and the eventual blackhole immunifying of MkV spirecraft jumpships.

6.01: With three of the ion cannons down, 20 Mk. 2 scouts decide to take a jaunt through the AI homeworld to Murdoch. They almost make it.

6.02.30: The three scout starships are pulled from their current tachyon duties. 33 brave souls make the jump through the Desenan wormhole, hoping for sight of a land previously unknown.

6.02.52: The core heavy beam guard post sitting next to the wormhole to Murdoch annihilates them all.

6.05: Five transports are created. The reincarnated scouts, along with all 5 scout starships, split into two groups. Each enters a transport.

6.06.06: A full cap of railpods and younglings jumps into the Desenan system, with orders to raise hell.

6.08.08: The transports slip in right behind them, and make a dash for Murdoch.

6.06.20: Grav drones catch four of the transports. One, however, with 18 scouts aboard, is nearly at the Murdoch wormhole. It explodes, taking the first hit from the core beam guard post. 6 seconds before the beam post reloads.

6.06.24: Desperately struggling amid rapidly failing cloaking superboost, the scouts reach the Murdoch wormhole. One solitary starship makes it through. The other transports are wiped out, with no survivors. A reprisal wave is announced. But if we have more, new, vital information about the AI then their sacrifice cannot have been for nothing.

Edit: Also, 21% of people who have ever won a game have the double godlike achievement for beating two AIs on diff 10. Even I don't have that ('cos of a bug).

That is a very cool statistic. That just goes to show just how crazy we are all in our own way of finding "bugs".

It is almost a point of pride (internally for me at least) to find a bug and exploit it to get that 10/10 victory before it is patched. I have done it twice in 8 years. I wonder if I will find a third time.

I thought about it! I decided that it was more fair of a challenge to beat Diff 10 on the strength of my own understanding, rather than relying on forum suggestions, and I had not thought to do 8 homeworlds on a 10 planet map on my own. I did manage it in the end: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,15770.0.html